After David had walked through every room and confirmed that Allison was not in the house, he decided to try and call her cell phone. First, he picked up his own cell phone and found that he had no signal, which had never happened in his house before. Then he tried the land line and found that it was dead, as well. Again, David couldn't think of anything else to do, so he sat down and ate his cereal.
He once again considered going back to bed, but instead decided to check with the neighbors to see if their power was out. Going outside, David saw that the sun was beginning to break up the haze and the sky seemed normal to him now. He wondered if his half-asleep mind had merely tricked him into seeing the odd lighting earlier. He trudged next door to his neighbor's house (the single mom that looked excellent in her little jogging outfits, not the creepy old man on the other side that sometimes looked at Allison for just a little too long) and knocked on the door. He waited for twenty seconds and then pushed the doorbell. Nothing.
He peeked in the front window of his neighbor's house, but didn't see anything. Then it dawned on him: he didn't see anything. No lights, no digital clock on the cable box - nothing. He assumed that the power must be out for the whole neighborhood.
David had a pretty high opinion of his own intellect, so it was fairly exasperating when it took him about fifteen minutes to figure out how to manually open the garage door. Once he did, and he got behind the wheel of his car, a nagging voice in the back of his head told him that the car wouldn't start, just like nothing else had worked yet that morning. But it started immediately and David felt foolish.
The clock in the car said that it was 10:22 AM.
David was about halfway down his block when he realized what felt so odd: there was no one outside. No kids playing in yards, no one mowing their lawn (and is was Saturday morning) and no one else driving. By the time David got out of his neighborhood and onto a main road a ball of panic had begun to build in the pit of his stomach because he still hadn't seen another living being. He drove to the Target, knowing that there are always people at the Target and was relieved to find that the parking lot was half-filled with cars. Somewhat less than he had expected on a Saturday morning, but at least there were people there. But when he pulled into the lot, he didn't see anyone. No other cars were moving in the parking lot and no people were walking into or out of the Target.
He parked his car and approached the Target, but the automatic doors didn't open. He looked inside and it was dark; apparently the power was off here, too. He pulled on the handle of one of the manual doors and it swung open. David was a little surprised that it opened; since the automatic door wouldn't open, he assumed the whole place was locked up. After a moment's hesistation he walked into the Target.
There was no one to be found. It was disconcerting to say the least. The panic was growing in his stomach and for the third time that morning he contemplated going back to bed and hoping that this was all a bad dream. Instead, he had a nonsensical thought: if I steal something, I'm sure to get caught, but at least then someone else will have to be here. So David grabbed a candy bar from one of the checkout aisles and opened it. He looked around expectantly, but was met by utter silence. He took a bite of the candy bar and nothing happened.
Then, overcome by panic, David dropped the candy bar and sprinted out of the store.
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